Time Signatures

MikeEnRegalia wrote: I'm currently listening to The Andromeda Strain (Shadow Gallery: Room V), and after the solo there's a cool section: 5/4 on top of 4/4. There are 5 bars of 4/4, and part of the band plays 4 bars of 5/4 on top of it ... amazing. It creates the illusion of the drummer swapping bass and snare every bar. Polyrhythms RULE.

You wouldn't happen to like Tool now, Would you?  Poly's GALORE in their music.

7/8 isn't *that* rare.

It's really common in higher grade music.
It seems like I played a piece with 7/8 every other day in band.

GoldenSpiral wrote: let us not forget part VI of Supper's Ready: Apocalypse in 9/8, which of course is in 9/8 time with not a triplet, but a 4+5 feel.

Wouldn't that more accurately make it "Apocalypse in 9/4"?

I've never heard of anything /8 being anything but compound time, so 9/8 is 3x3 quavers, or three dotted crotchets to the bar however they're presented.

Since "Apocalypse..." has 9 quite regular and identifiable beats, I think it's in simple time - and the carving into 4+5 just underlines that for me.

Even Genesis could have got it wrong - or were just being deliberately obtuse

"Perpetual Change" on The Yes album always confused me. There's a bit in the middle where the guitars start playing a fast riff and the keyboard comes in with a different riff from the verse. It was years before I realised that the two actually fit together as the guitar riff is in 7/4 and the keyboard is in 6/4 then 8/4 (or whatever) so they're both actually playing 14 beats.

Wow!

[QUOTE=Progbear]
Sixteenth-note-based meters are rare for a reason. Usually they’re there to indicate a tempo shift, i.e.: “double time”. Again, I go to John McLaughlin for an example, namely the track “Dream”. The whole thing is in 15: the slow-motion parts in 15/4, the swinging andante parts in 15/8 and the “oh my God! That’s fast!” parts in 15/16.

In such cases, of course, you generally have a notation above that reads [quarter note] = [quarter note], telling you that the actual metronome pulse hasn’t changed, and the rhythmic value of eighth and sixteenth notes are the same as when you were playing at a slower tempo. The exception would be if the change-over in time signature was accompanied by a notation reading [sixteenth note] = [metronome BPM value].

Are they really that rare? Since the early 90's, there's hardly a prog metal record without a bunch of 16th-note-based meters. I think that they've become more popular with the increasing technical skills of the musicians; it's an easy way to make a song more interesting, at least to other people who are into that stuff. Myself, I hardly listen to a song without trying to figure out which meters are used...but then again, I'm a damaged soul. :)

And as for that link... well, I guess it quite proves that Vai knew what he was doing.

+ another Jarzombek oddity - I can't remember the title, I think it's a Spastic Ink track though - all the themes are quintuplets played in 5/4 to 5 bar phrases using 5 notes with a key signature of 5 sharps and 5bs

 

edit: "gimme 5", maybe?

Edited by goose

bityear wrote: Worth mentioning is that 9/8 isn't always a 3/4 with triplet feeling.

I think the most famous example of syncopated 9/8 is Dave Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo A La Turk”, which follows a 2+2+2+3 pattern. Shifting two groups of three into three groups of two like that is called “hemiola”. You hear it a lot more often in 12/8, and is basically the same idea as the alternating bars of 6/8 and 3/4 I gave earlier.

I would also consider Birds of Fire a 9/8 track, since it becomes easier to read the notes on a sheet if the X/ i lesser. Makes it easier to see the grouings, and to find the 1st beat, and stuff like that.

I’m guessing it was notated as 18/8 in the manuscript because of the 5+5+5+3 pattern, so the rhythm didn’t cross bar lines (though you could also notate the guitar arpeggios as 16th notes, and it wouldn’t).

On the other hand, “Meeting of the Spirits” has a 5+5+2 pattern, and McLaughlin notated that as 6/4. Go figure!

As for /16 rythms, well, it might get a little tricky. When you count semiquavers, and you 'cut' (gah! These musical terms are so annoying - why doesn't everybody speak Swedish?? )

Try “sixteenth notes”. The North American system is much simpler than all those wacky and seemingly arbitrary British names for the notes.

Sixteenth-note-based meters are rare for a reason. Usually they’re there to indicate a tempo shift, i.e.: “double time”. Again, I go to John McLaughlin for an example, namely the track “Dream”. The whole thing is in 15: the slow-motion parts in 15/4, the swinging andante parts in 15/8 and the “oh my God! That’s fast!” parts in 15/16.

In such cases, of course, you generally have a notation above that reads [quarter note] = [quarter note], telling you that the actual metronome pulse hasn’t changed, and the rhythmic value of eighth and sixteenth notes are the same as when you were playing at a slower tempo. The exception would be if the change-over in time signature was accompanied by a notation reading [sixteenth note] = [metronome BPM value].

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MIKE (a.k.a. "Progbear")

"The only completely consistent people are dead"  --Aldous Huxley

N.P.:"City Lips"-Vanessa

goose wrote: 5/4's different to 10/8 just like 3/4 is different to 6/8 though

Quintuplets in two? A neat idea! That’s not what “Dance of Maya” is, though. It’s a 3+3+4 pattern as opposed to being “in 5”, so I guess it makes a kind of sense. Though a 3+3+2 syncopated eighth-note pattern is a common rhythmic variation of 4/4, and you almost never see it notated as 8/8.

Again, unless you’re John McLaughlin

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MIKE (a.k.a. "Progbear")

"It is not an obscenity to be free. It is a divine right." --Annette Peacock

N.P.:"Remember the Stars"-Universe

With regards to time signatures in that PF song, you've got to remember they are only a label, and a lot of it comes from how the listener hears the music, or the player thinks about it while he/she is playing it. In other words, there's no such thing as a "fake" 7/4. With Money, if PF thought of it as seven 1/4 notes in a bar, then it is 7 notes in a bar, regardless of what the drums do. The same is true if PF thought of it as one bar of 4 and one of 3. However, it's an obvious 7 to me - there is only one downbeat in that riff IMO, and thats on the "one" of the 7.

...

I think the most important thing when working out time signatures is being able to asses where beat one is. You can't worry about subdivisions, polyrhythms, voicings or anything complex until you're able see where beat one is. Being able to do this is more or less difficult depending on the genre you're looking at. In rock, the strongest beat is mostly 1, so that makes it easier. However, in other genres, such as Jazz, the strongest beats may be on different beats. Jazz has strong beats on 2 and 4, and in Samba, beat 1 of a set of two bars is so weak often no instrument will ever hit it full on, the note most phrases start/end on being the "and" or 4 of the previous bar. This makes it very difficult when thinking about pulses in many of these types of music. But once you've mastered assesing where beat one is, you can then count on from there and work out the possible time signature.

Time signatures ultimately relate to whatever is being played, and if in doubt, always try and make it as close to 4/4 purely for clarity. I try and relate everything to 4/4 and then look for differences - stuff added, stuff taken away, etc. But sometimes labels play an important role to the phrasings of the music - 21/8 is definitely not the same as three bars of 7/8. Most definately, there will be varied phrasings within the bar which will not make it sound like three bars of 7/8. Bartok tried to get his point across like this when writing his pieces (especially the later pieces in his Mikrokosmos books). He might write a time signature of 3+3+2/8, which is not the same as 4/4, because the sections of the bar are clearly defined - the accents will land as so...
1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 ¦ 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 etc

This article deals with the more complex nature of time signatures - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_signature

As an example, here is a section from Ron Jarzombek's new album, Machinations of Dementia

http://www.spasticink.com/rjrem.wmv

If you've followed me this far, you'll be able to see the tim signatures go past as he plays them...

note: x [a number] indicates the number of bars this sime signature is played for.

4/4 count in
4/4 x 1
5/8 x 1
4/4 x 1
5/8 x 1
4/4 x 1
4/8 x 1 (this could also be 2/4)
5/4 x 5
4/4 x 1
3/8 x 1
4/4 x 1
3/8 x 1
5/8 x 1
4/4 x 1
5/8 x 1
4/4 x 1
5/8 x 1
4/4 x 1
5/8 x 1 and out...

Hope this helps you/answers your questions...


Edited by LDGuy

goose wrote: The guitar riff in Money accents the first and fourth beat, which is what makes it sound like a slow 7/8.

I hear the hard accent on beat 1, but the accent on beat 4 is much softer, which stops the riff from "swinging" on that beat - it seems to swing around all the beats fairly evenly. Also, some of the rhythms are dotted across two main beats (e.g. notes 2 and 3 in bar 1), which is an unusual practice in 7/8.

Most tabs I've seen are in 7/4, and Roger himself describes it this way

"Paranoid Android" could well be in 7/8 though - I haven't made up my mind yet as I always stop analysing and start enjoying this one